Fat physical activity programs as a reimagining and tool of resistance to reshape physical activity culture


Kasie Murphy, Queen's University

Fat people are often marginalized in organized physical activity. Discrimination against fat people is prominent in organized physical activity (Pearl et al, 2015; Thedinga et al., 2021). Research has shown that many fitness and sport professionals tend to stigmatize fatness by engaging in moralizing behaviours attributing fatness to laziness and a lack of self-control (Rubino et al., 2020; Bevan et al., 2021). Anti-fat bias has been identified in fitness instructors (Ntoumanis et al., 2018), physical education teachers (Readdy and Wallhead, 2016), and gym employees (Robertson and Vahora, 2008). This fatphobia often leads to fat participants having low feelings of competence, avoidance of exercise, reduced physical activity, and self-exclusion from physical activity programs (Thedinga et al., 2021). In my dissertation, I seek to identify strategies to make organized physical activity programs more inclusive to fat people and to see if physical activity programs can help combat social structures of fatphobia. To do this, I look to the work of fat activists who have used organized physical activity to empower fat people and create fat communities for a long time, from fat gyms, fat baseball teams, fat dance classes, fat hiking groups, to fat running clubs. These programs have worked to create a space outside of conventional physical activity to help fat people to regain embodied joys in movement in a safer space designed to better meet their needs. In this presentation, I will provide more specifics about how some of these programs operate including strategies they employ and challenges they face in hopes of finding strategies to improve physical activity cultures more broadly.  This research is rooted in Fat Studies and Sport Sociology. Fat Studies, as a discipline, challenges stereotypes about fatness and investigates the social processes through which fat identities are marginalized in both institutional and popular knowledges (Pausé, 2014). Fat Studies scholars have identified that physical activity programs designed for fat people can challenge fatphobia, teach bodily acceptance, and create community (Ellison, 2020; Oliver and Cameron, 2021). Similarly, sport sociology scholars see organized physical activity as a form of community building and embodied pleasure (Henricks, 2006; Pringle et al., 2015; Wellard, 2013). Sport scholars have shown that organized physical activity can combat colonialism (McGuire-Adams, 2020; Fortier and Hastings, 2019), homophobia (Carter and Baliko, 2007; Davidson, 2009), and racism (Thangaraj, 2015) by spaces organized around the needs of marginalized people. These programs may allow marginalized people to create social transformations that extends beyond sport (Adams, 2021). Thus, I seek to use the work of sport sociologists to identify the transformative potential of physical activity programs to combat the structures of oppression identified by Fat Studies scholars. Furthermore, my analysis is rooted in Fat Feminist Standpoint theory. Sandra Harding (2004) sees standpoint as the relationship between knowledge production and power. To Harding, standpoint is simultaneously a theory, method, and methodology. It emerged in the 1970s and 1980s when feminist scholars were actively trying to transform and disrupt ways of knowing (Hesse-Biber, 2012). Standpoint theory criticizes “the very standards for what counts as knowledge, objectivity, rationality, and good scientific method” (Harding, 2004, 2). Standpoint theory is, at root, a critique of approaches to knowledge that are Western, patriarchal, white, and colonial. Therefore, I use this theory to both challenge dominant knowledges that lead to intersecting forms of fat oppression and to structure my method by being mindful of who’s knowledge and input I include in this project and how I analyse their contributions. In this presentation, I will share some of the preliminary findings from my dissertation. Specifically, I hope to share findings about the cultural landscape that lead to the formation of fat physical activity programs. Additionally, I will share some of the things I’ve learned from interviews with people who organize physical activity programs designed for fat people in Canada and the United States. These findings will focus on what lead to their program’s creation, how organizers structure their programs to mindfully integrate the diverse needs of fat people, and what aspects organizers feel may be transferable to conventional physical activity spaces in hopes of finding strategies to combat fatphobia in physical activity cultures more broadly. 

This paper will be presented at the following session: